Great read; just one thing I’d add re the housing discussion which I think is sometimes neglected is that unlike essentially all other assets everyone is naturally short housing as they’re always going to need somewhere to live. As such buying a similar amount of housing as one plans to use in the future (this can also be done via investing disproportionately into housebuilding stocks or buying shares of various properties) can reduce your risk to future price increases (which historically have been large, especially if you value living in cities/desirable locations).
Housing could therefore be a sensible investment even if you thought an index fund would yield slightly higher returns. This effect is further heightened by the fact most individuals have extremely limited access to leverage unless buying a house and the tax advantages associated with a mortgage too.
Regarding Ozzie’s point above about markets where agents can pay to acquire costly information; this is the famous Grossman-Stiglitz paradox (1980), and indeed the paper concludes that informationally efficient markets are impossible in this setting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grossman-Stiglitz_Paradox